So glad to hear about Retroville. I hope you both take good things away from it.
Listen, I want to second Sandi on the respect thing and how people interperate things differently. She is careful to say in her situation she had difficulty respecting her H because she saw his sweet and nice as weakness. IMO, if more women were really honest with themselves, they would also say they feel that way. I know I lost respect for my H for the same reasons. Society has skewed the male/female lines so much in the last couple of decades and women have shown they have strength and are capable of more than housework and we have said that we want men to be more feeling. I do not thing any of that is bad or untrue. But we still, underneath it, want a man who shows confidence, strength, who is willing to lead but not dictate. And if men were honest, they might also say, yes we want women to be strong and empowered, BUT we still want them to nurture, take care of the home, the kids, and be the support system. It is the natural and ordained order of things, whether we want to admit it or not. If we really sit and look at things from an outsiders POV, we can see how the roles have reversed, mixed themselves up, and no one really knows (for lack of a better term) WHO wears the pants anymore. Just MOP.
"Acceptance doesn't mean resignation. It means understanding that something is what it is and there's got to be a way through it."--Michael J. Fox
